


FRY News Yodism Report

by TheSubtextMachine



Category: The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Documentary style, Epilogue, Gen, I just like this musical, Kevin is gay because I am GOD, Relentless Positivity, self indulgent discussions about the ideal religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15072986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: The epilogue to Book of Mormon, through the eyes of a documentary film crew watching the religion after the Book of Arnold.





	FRY News Yodism Report

“So, is the uhh, mic on?” Elder Cunningham asks, his fingers flying to the microphone clipped to the stretchy collar of a t-shirt that barely fits anymore. There’s a gust of the wind, which swings a branch dangerously close to his head, but he suffers no injury.

“Yep. So just look at me and answer the questions,” answers Meg, the documentarian. The branch swings again, with more power. It doesn’t hit Elder Cunningham, and the thought springs in the back of Meg’s mind that he might just be a prophet after all.

“Sounds good. What’s the first question?”

“Who are you?”

“Arnold Cunningham. Or Elder Cunningham, some people prefer that.”

“I’m gonna need the full introduction here. What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do? Why is a film crew here?”

“Oh, okay. Well my name is Arnold Cunningham, and some people call me Elder Cunningham. I was born in Salt Lake City, but as you can probably tell, I am now in Uganda, and it’s kind of become my home. What are the other questions?”

“What do you do, and why are we here?”

At this, he lets out a wide, sheepish grin, and the fact that he’s one step away from being a cult leader becomes less of a mystery to her. Despite herself, she trusts him.

“Well, I am the head… guy of Yodism. That’s what the religion is called, I named it. We used to be Mormon, but we were formally kicked out, but we all kind of thought ‘hey, we’ve got something here’. So I wrote the Book of Arnold, and BAM! Yodism. We’re actually growing pretty fast, our teachings resonate with a lot of people, apparently.”

“So, why is there a film crew here, then?”

“Because a busload of Mormons made their own religion, and it brought hope to a lot of people who didn’t have hope. That, or you just wanted to laugh at people using metaphors about Star Wars to prove why you should be a good person, which a lot of people do. Either way, we welcome you, and can answer your questions.”

“Good. Because we have a lot.”

-

“So my film crew is placing bets on whether this is a cult,” Meg says into the camera, before turning it out to the crew, munching on granola bars and laughing.

“I vote yes, just so you know!” Peter says, running his hand along the material of the large tent they’re in, as if to make sure that it’s as sturdy as he desperately wants it to be.

“I vote no, for the record,” adds in Kelly beside him, who’s half-reclining and writing something in her journal.

“What do you think, Meg?” Justin asks, fiddling with his audio equipment to assure that it’s packed up properly.

“Jury’s still out for me. Let’s see what I think tomorrow.”

-

“I originally wanted to spread my wings in Orlando, be the Floridian Joseph Smith. I like this better, though,” says Kevin Price before taking a sip of coffee. He seems to treasure every taste.

“Why is that?”

“I’m free. No more absurd rules, no more overwrought guilt. I don’t have to fret over following a numbered list of rules, I just have to be a good person, and things will probably work out. That’s nice.”

“I can see why. Do you have any new freedoms that you want to talk about?”

“I like drinking coffee, that’s nice. I’m allowed to date too, and I don’t have to worry about going to hell if I want to do something like kiss a guy, which is nice.”

“What does Yodism say about being gay, anyway?”

“In case I was too subtle, it’s cool. McKinley walked up to Arnold one day, nervous out of his mind, and asked him about it. I just remember Arnold looking at Connor, dumbfounded. And I quote, he just said ‘it’s cool. As long as you don’t hurt anyone or anything, you can totally be gay’.”

“So, are you…?”

“Yeah. Very gay. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad I figured that one out when I was in Uganda.”

Meg starts laughing, and continues even after the camera cuts away.

-

“Okay, Kelly, so Elder, uhh?” Meg asks, turning to the man on her right.

“Elder Buttfuckingnaked.”

The camera shakes with Kelly’s laughter, but steadies enough to focus on Meg’s amused, confused face. Meg looks right into the camera for a split second, before turning back to the Elder.

“Ok, Elder Buttfuckingnaked. He has graciously let us follow him, he’s going to a nearby village to preach to a group of prospective Yodists. Ready to go?”

“Yes,” he says simply, before he begins to walk. Kelly follows from behind, catching the whole exchange from behind their backs.

“So, uhh, sir. What is your conversion story?”

Elder Buttfucking naked looks over his shoulder, laughing a bit as he looks into the blank eye of the camera, before turning back to Meg.

“Before I found out about Yodism, I was a warlord. I’m called Buttfuckingnaked because legend would have it that I would kill someone when I was butt fucking naked. It was a lot of gossip, a lot of talk.”

“Was it true?”

“Absolutely.”

This time, Meg turns back to the camera, her eyes wide and a bit scared. She turns back just in time to avoid any suspicion, but the moment passes between her and the camera.

“Did you…”

“Kill? All the time. Do it butt fucking naked? Some of the time.”

Another bout of silence passes, and Meg almost trips over a tree branch. She’s honestly a bit taken aback by the casual air he held, the normalcy with which he relays these insane stories. There’s some time where she has no idea what to say in the face of someone who had actually killed other people, but she pulls together every iota of journalistic integrity she has so she can try.

“So, when did you actually convert to Yodism?”

“Well, I had a big tiff with the Mormons when they first arrived to our town. I tried to scare them off-”

“How?” Meg asks, and the morbid curiosity is clear, even from her profile.

“Shot a guy in the face, but that didn’t scare Arnold. He is either very stupid, or very brave. Possibly both. Kevin, though, was scared off his ass. He had blood all over his shirt, and he was screaming, and it was all quite hilarious, if I do say so myself. Something must’ve happened to him overnight, because he stormed right into the camp and started preaching. He can be even dumber than Arnold, that one.”

“What happened next?”

“What am I allowed to say on camera? This is… explicit.”

“Whatever you want, we can edit it out if it’s too vulgar. Just… say what you did,” Meg says, before turning back once again to the camera, mouthing a constant ‘oh my god oh my god oh my god’, utterly afraid.

“He had this book. This, uh, Book of Mormon. And I put it in his… how can I say this politely… anal cavity. That’s what the doctor called it. His anal cavity.”

-

“Yep,” Elder Price says, grimacing at the memory, “That happened. I can confirm from first hand experience that it happened.”

-

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, it _was_ kind of funny.”

Meg looks back, horrified, her litany of ‘oh my god’s returning.

“So. Moving on. How did you actually convert?”

“After the official Mormon people had left, and someone reached out to me, a friend of a friend. He came up to me and said, ‘Hey. Did you hear about what Yoda said?’. So I’m confused as _fuck_. I say ‘who the fuck is Yoda?’, and he says ‘the guy who chooses whether you go to Mordor or not’. So I’m doubly confused, because what is Mordor? And apparently it is this place you go after you die, and there is fire and it is awful. So now I’m confused, because why is my friend believing all of this bullshit? It is so obvious that this Yoda man is a liar. Mordor isn’t real. But then, he says something that changed me. ‘Mordor isn’t real, General Buttfuckingnaked, but you know what is real? Guilt. Shame. Never knowing love, never knowing connection. And that shit? It’s worse than Mordor. And Yoda isn’t real either, but he is a metaphor for wisdom, for the things that we know but ignore because it makes our life easy. And you know what Yoda said?’ he asked. I wanted his answer, of course.”

“What did Yoda say?”

“The clitoris is holy among all things. That changed my life.”

-

“If I got one thing through to that man, I’m glad that it was that,” says Arnold, visibly relieved.

-

The footage cuts straight to the former General’s preaching session, and he’s standing in front of a verifiable horde of people. The camera catches whole families, sitting on the ground and looking up him, intrigued. It’s a fascinating sight, watching him speak.

“There may or may not be something up there. We will always struggle. We will always wish for paradise, and we may never get there, but if we treat each other right, we can step closer to paradise ourselves. We cannot find heaven, but I believe that we may be able to create it. Let’s make this our paradise planet.”

The camera pans to Meg, standing on the outskirts of the action. She appears touched.

“But why? I’m in pain, my whole family is in pain. Why should I should myself through more pain by sacrificing all the time I have left?”

“Well, fucker, you know what feels good?”

Meg turns to the camera, alarmed again. Some of the audience laughs. The man who asked the question gives a “go ahead” motion with his hand.

“Being nice. And I know. I thought that was bullshit, until I tried! Being nice gets easier the more you do it, and it may hurt at first, but after you start, people treat you better, and everything looks a bit sunnier. If you want to attempt, just read this book,” the general says, before pulling ‘The Book of Arnold’ out of his bag. 

-

“The Book of Arnold?” Arnold asks, a bit taken aback.

“Did you write it?”

“It was a group project. Nabulungi had the idea that I should write it, and I made an outline of what I’d talk about. Kevin used her typewriter to type it, and I dictated what he typed, and then some of the villagers read it and told me what to fix, and we went through it again. We all did it together.”

“Why’d you name it that?”

“We took a vote. It was either that or ‘You May Have Maggots, But You Can Have God’.”

“I feel like that would work better as a quote on the back or something…”

“I agree! It’s in the dedications page.”

“Just out of curiosity… why maggots?”

“Oh, there’s a doctor here with maggots in his scrotum. He talks about it a lot. He’s converted, but that hasn’t changed, and it’s something that we want to let people remember. We never want to present ourselves as a cure-all.”

“His scrotum? How?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I feel like any story that ends with maggots in a scrotum is something that would scar me for life, so I just don’t ask.”

“That makes sense.”

-

“So, how do you deal with the very different worlds you and the missionaries live with?” Meg asks Nabulungi, who’s smiling at her with her usual cheery disposition.

“I know that even if we have different worries and different fears, we can all find paradise. Kevin and Arnold both have very different levels of, how could I say, pain tolerance than I do. Kevin got a cut from a page in a book, and he cried when he got some aloe on it. It was interesting, to say the least. It’s just funny to me, I guess. He is very weak!”

-

“She said that? But I’m the one who carries her typewriter for her! Why would she ask me to do that so often if she thought that I was weak?” Kevin asks, a bit frantic, as if he was going over every interaction they had before to pinpoint the moment when she decided he was weak.

“It had something to do with hand sanitizer on a paper cut, I believe.”

 

“Oh my god, of course Nabulungi is going to bring that up. For the record, I was having a really bad day.”

“So you cried because of a paper cut?”

“It was a really bad day!”

-

“We are all very different. I know this, you know this. But truth is still truth, even coming from the mouth of a white boy who has no pain tolerance. These ideas can apply to all of us,” Nabulungi says, an imprint of a smile remaining on her face. Meg doesn’t know exactly what keeps her so happy, but the energy is infectious.

-

“So, any new opinions on the cult debate?” Peter asks. It’s nearing nighttime, and they have to spark up a few camping lights to keep up their work.

“I am actually switching my vote. It has a wacky name and whatever, but it just seems to be a lot of people united under the common cause of being nice,” says Kelly before yawning.

“What counts as a cult? I mean, there’s the charismatic leader,” Peter asks as he unwraps a protein bar.

“Is Arnold Cunningham charismatic, though? He just seems sweaty to me. But like, in a way that translates into who he is in the core of himself,” Justin asks Peter, a small, relaxed smile on his face.

“He may be sweaty but something about him is just so trustworthy. He’s one of those guys that you would trust with your life. I wouldn’t even trust Justin with my phone,” says Kelly, before turning her eyes to Meg, who sits behind the camera, “Penny for your thoughts, Meg?”

“I feel like on paper, it’s totally a cult. But in practice? There’s something more there. I can agree though, the name is questionable,” says Kelly from behind the camera, not even bothering to turn it around to face her. 

-

“So, what’s the deal with the name?”

“Well, in our epic parables, there was some passages where Yoda was some sort of judge figure. He was like an ancient fountain of innate wisdom, and we figured that summed up our cause pretty well. We just want to be good in the ways we already know how to be, y’know?” Arnold answers, and he’s somehow more serious than Meg had seen him in previous interviews.

“But Yoda, of all people?”

“All of these stories are a mod podge of sci-fi and all that, so that’s kind of reflected in the name.”

“Speaking of which, why did you choose all of these random sci-fi references as a root to your religion.”

“I was literally making stuff up on the spot. It’s not deep or anything, it was just what came to mind first. I’m, like, 19.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. Is it weird to be the head of a religion when you’re 19 and just making stuff up?”

“It’s weird, yeah. But it’s nice. I mean, I have an identity crisis about whether I can handle this every week, but we’re holding up pretty well. And I’m surrounded by 19 year olds that are major figures in the religion. Look at Nabulungi, or Kevin. And McKinley is only 21, and he’s the guy who’s doing all of these behind the scenes work. He’s setting up our system of receiving donations to improve the living quality of people in the town, and managing online sales of the book. I have no idea how he does it, but he does, and he’s only 21.”

“That’s crazy. I’m 22, and I’m nowhere close to that. Are you guys proud of what you’ve put together?”

“I’m sure McKinley is. He got internet to Uganda, so he’s pretty jazzed. But me? This is just what I do. It’s not glamorous or anything, I’m just doing what I hope is the right thing the best I can.”

-

“Am I proud? I mean, I did have some grand visions of my future as the next Joseph Smith, and I didn’t really that. I am proud of what we as a team did, but as Kevin Price? I have no idea.”

-

“Proud? Totally. I have seen so much change in the short time this religion has been doing it’s work, I’m proud beyond belief,” says Nabulungi, smiling so widely it looks like she might burst.

-

“I’m proud, totally. Three years ago I was terrified and in the closet, and now I’m doing some serious grunt work for an awesome religion that accepts me the way I am. This is a dream, if I’m being honest,” says Connor McKinley, and he looks beyond the camera, with an expression that’s eerie, the expression of someone who’s been through hell and a bit shocked to find themselves in anywhere else.

-

“So, how do you join the religion?” Meg asks, and some soft music plays. 

“Just believing is enough. You can buy the book, list it as your religion, whatever. But just be a good person, and we’ll accept you with open arms.”

-

The entire crew is packing up, and this time, Kelly is behind the handheld camera, panning over the exhausted people in her tent.

“So, Meg, final verdict. Cult or not?”

“I don’t think it’s a cult. I never thought I’d say it, but Yodism doesn’t sound like the worst idea.”

“Meg is a Yodist now, it’s official.”

“Should we close it out? Do the outro? Or save that for the plane?” Justin asks.

“Kelly, I’ll take the camera. Take it away, superstar.”

“Shut up, Peter. Okay, so this is Kelly Joel with FRY News, thanks for watching.”

**Author's Note:**

> yall this was fun to write... if u have requests for writing for this fandom and others, send me an ask on tumblr @thesubtextmachine. If you just want me to smile, leave a comment, and I'll be smiling like a loon! Thanks for reading!


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